History Melting Ice and Globe trotting!

I love love our new History curriculum. Its a little simplistic for my dd as she already knows her Geography pretty well but its fun! We liked our first lesson today! I'm slowly selling myself on next year's curriculum, I think I have Science and History at least lined up but give me a few more lessons on the History before I commit! :)

Dh roached dd's computer the other day so she got a new one via courier today - he actually paid for same day shipping!! (he doesn't do that for me! he musta felt bad!!) So the computer arrived a few minutes before we walked out the door for lunch with my dear friend. When we got back I decided it was time to go back to school so we finished up yesterday's science lesson which discussed states of matter - specifically changing solids to liquids. Watching melting ice! It was a quick follow up but it was good to get back into the swing of things.

For history, which was actually Geography today, we pulled out our globe. We had to find various continents and then match animals from each continent with their home. Pretty simple really but just confirmed to me that dd knows what she is doing so far! LOL! She is getting used to the idea of narration and it was neat to see her excited about a new assignment!

When school was over (we only did 2 subjects today - full swing next week,) daddy came home and needed to upgrade his computer (I now have the slowest one in the house! but I digress! LOL!) Anyway, while he was upgrading I showed her how to work her knitting spool. She is thrilled with it. She has a full ball of purple (the only colour) Caron Simply Soft yarn to play with. I wonder what she will come up with. She has it down pat... now if she could remember to port her ball with her when she walks around the house knitting! (ah well made serious old daddy laugh! LOL!

Oh and in case you are wondering, yes she took it to bed with her to work on for an hour before coming down for her goldfish!

On an interesting note, she got a book today from our lunch date and good friend. It seems geared toward older girls (think tweens and teens) but there is a bunch of fun stuff in there and I think we'll have a lot of fun with it... There is one for boys too which I will order a little later just because it has more mechanical stuff in it... and we wouldn't want to be gender specific. But like I said a lot of fun! :) You'll probably see postings here eventually. She also got a Cranium game (with frogs on it - oh Frog Princess.) We haven't figured it out yet because the Littlest pitched a fit when we were learning.

During M's lessons today though Little S played with her peoples... we were doing animals so she insisted we had to gather up all the animals andput them in a bowl so she could play with them on the hearth... when we pulled out the globe she had to be right in there... thank goodness a second blow up globe is coming!

Weaving on a 20 year old Loom!

My mum has been cleaning out her house for almost a year now... and last year in June she sent me this toy that I got for Christmas from Santa one year (I think I was 10!) Well anyway, by September we pulled it out and strung it up with the goal of making a go of it. We were missing a few vital tools. Mum sent them this year with my birthday stuff.
After a year on the loom she finished a small woven rug - which she will use as a blanket for her favourite stuffed Webkinz frog - Bertram. She was very proud of herself. (finished pic will follow soon!) I was just pleased I remember how to finish it off! LOL!

Adding History

I'm not really good about getting the books we need from the library. Its time consuming to sit down and figure out all the stuff that we need pull out and then figure out what I need to know about the subjects... so we once again look to K-12 for our History. I hope it is as enjoyable as their Grade 1 Science.

Slowly but surely we make progress...

Happy New Year 2008

Happy New Year

Dh and the oldest have been working on CAT5 Testing for our purposes.

I don't like testing but he wanted a baseline to work with before she does the mandated test when she hits grade 3... right now she's in grade 1. She is breezing right through it.

I think he also wants something to let his mom know that we're on the right track. Yes, with all things the grandparents and family are watching and keeping tabs on us - some support us others believe its a horrible mistake to homeschool - some question my abilities to teach. So there you have it, we test to prove ourselves worthy!

On a positive note the oldest has been begging for a test, so here ya go girl! :) Ask and you shall receive!

We're still on vacation for the restof the week though mummy here is itchin to get started again! LOL!

Literature - Gingerbread houses

So yesterday we did a lesson in literature and ended up with:

Credits: Papers and Embellies: Fresh Air by Tracy Collins (Retrodiva at DigitalFreebies),
Template: Brenda Miller for May 07 - Gottapixel's BluePrint Challenge,
Fonts: Joyful Juliana (dafont.com) and Kristin ITC

Literature?? How you ask? Well we're starting fairy tales and we learned the characteristics of Fairy Tales, and though we skipped over the planned months of October and November (because we started late) and jumped right in to December.... we figured Hansel and Gretel would be the best way to kick off the month of December and build a Gingerbread house! Now everyone knows the story of Hansel and Gretel right?! LOL!

A little ingenuity. We didn't want to use a full gingerbread house kit (let me rephrase... I didn't want to!) so we picked up a few supplies... Graham crackers, icing, M&Ms and kissables,.... we should have had more variety but this was supposed to be a small 1/2 hr project... M's first time building her own Gingerbread house.... and this worked out great. A good learning and practice tool for her. At some point later this month we'll drag out the Gingerbread train and do that maybe when "Babi" gets here.

So this is older dd's house. Not bad for a first try! :) -------->

And thisis the mummy helped 2 yr old's house!
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All in all we had a good time making them and daddy arrived just as we were finishing up! We ate them guiltlessly for dessert after dinner! Yum!

Counting Change in Math (grade 2)

To make it more real dd was using the actual money to match the pictures to count the total for the change... It was a fun exercise!

Sensory

In the name of sensory play the fine ladies of the homeschool preschool group I've found had an awesome idea.... so despite the fact that it was 43F (6C) outside today here is the little one playing in the water.... yes that is a puddle on the seat behind her! LOL!